A dangerous cabal around George Bush, ignorant of world affairs and contemptuous of Europe, is threatening to destroy the world order, Lady Williams, the Liberal Democrat leader in the Lords, warned yesterday.

Known as she is for her close connections with the US, her remarks underline the gap growing between the Bush administration and mainstream European politicians.

Lady Williams said the new Bush doctrines of pre-emptive action and regime change were "wildly dangerous".

The US president set out the doctrines in a strategy paper to Congress last week. Lady Williams commented: "In effect you are exchanging the opinion of the international community for the opinion of the most powerful state. Yet the same doctrines could equally be applied by India vis-à-vis Pakistan, or in any dispute where a state feels threatened. It is throwing a match into a barrel of oil."

She described the cabal, including the vice-president, Dick Cheney, and the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, as "very strongly unilateralist. They don' talk much to foreign governments, they are contemptuous of Europe, particularly now Germany. They regard allies as just codpieces." Some of them she suggested wanted to take the US out of the UN. "To destroy the effectiveness of the UN and to make it a laughing stock would be terribly dangerous."

She also accused the US of deploying wrecking tactics to undermine the international criminal court.

She demanded that the UN be given until December 15 to see if the weapons inspectors could do their job - 60 days from October 15, the first stage at which the inspectors believe they will be able to enter.

She urged Tony Blair to dissociate himself in this week's debate from the doctrine of regime change. She praised him for seeking to influence the Bush administration from within, but added: "We are on the very edge of where he has to make clear his differences. He has to reject any US suggestion that if the UN does not pass the right kind of resolutions the US will feel free to carry on with whatever steps it wants against Iraq."

She feared moderate Arab opinion would explode if the weapons inspectors were not given a proper chance. The difficulty, she said, lay in Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon's closeness to the Bush team.

She saw the main restraining influence on Bush as the US military. "They do not agree with the cabal that Iraq will simply fall apart faced by an American onslaught."